Sound City (2013)

I knew I had to see it in the big screen.  I knew it was going to be a limited release in the Los Angeles area.  I expected to drive to LA or Pasadena -- which I did.  I also knew the kids, being Nirvana and Foo Fighters fans would want to come along.  So a week ago today, we set out to the Sunset Sundance Cinema off Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood.  Fandango said 1130am showing, we were there right at 1120.  Until we got in the box office and got turned back.  Turns out Sunset Sundance is a 21+ movie theather because they serve alcohol.  But at fucking 1130am?  Pissed off as hell, we ended up going to Guitar Center and Amoeba Records so at least the 60 mile drive from the 909 wasn't wasted.  But today, we went to Laemmle 7 in Pasadena and this was more friendly to kids.  Sound City?  Excellent movie based on a great story.  It's just a throwback to the days of analog and the historic albums made at this recording studio in Van Nuys.  Again, I knew I had to see it in the big screen with the nice sound system -- and I wasn't disappointed.  Dave Grohl had proven yet again that he is an artist with a vision that produces just great work.  Equal parts funny and great storytelling, this is all about music and the artists who make them, Tom Petty, Rick Springfield, Nirvana, Paul McCartney, Rick Rubin and others.  This is about family.  The group of individuals who owned, operated and maintained Sound City for countless bands and us, the listening public get to enjoy music thanks to their passion.  This is about rock and roll.

Mixtape Evolution

I was going through some old boxes and found a stash of these old cassette tapes that I had put together at some distant past.  Judging from the songs I had selected, this was made sometime in the early 90s with Guns N Roses' "November Rain" kicking off Side A and The Cure's "Pictures of You" on Side B.  I, for one, do not miss the analog days when I had to copy each track carefully from CD to a cassette deck.  The time it took to make this mixtape was probably on the order of 3 or 4 hours, including typing up and printing a case cover.  The tape hiss, inherent in the medium was annoying at the time as it is today, when I played this tape.  At some point, I just expect the iron deposited on the tape itself to fall off and this tape will be lost for eternity.  Hey, everybody's got some aspect of their past that they're ashamed of, right?  Tracy Chapman, Ultravox and Echo and the Bunnymen in my mixtape are skeletons in my musical closet.

Fast forward to 2000 and making audio CD compilations was the norm.  I made a bunch of these discs and just stashed them in the car for road trips.  I played this one and it sounds just as good as the first time I made it.  Digital is perfect and repeatable, in the event I want to make another CD with the exact same songs in the same order.  I still make some comp CDs today just because I like the convenience of not having to think about what to play in the car.  Each CD took about 30 minutes to make and the hard part is actually marking up the CD with the artist/song selection.  (No Doubt, 2Pac and Ice Cube made my playlist back then but most definitely won't make it in today.  )

And the last evolution (at least the one I've embraced) is the Ipod playlist.  As "must have" for the daily commuter like me each playlist can be created and edited in seconds and adding to the list is as simple as holding down a button for a few seconds.  At work today, as I was listening to songs, I would do just that -- add it to the On-The-Go playlist with the push of a button.  What I added today?  Rage, Audioslave, Rise Against, Foo Fighters.  Ten years from now?  I'll probably still be listening to Rage consider I was listening to it 13 years ago.

It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

No, Sgt. Pepper didn't teach the band to play.  But 20 years ago, the album that declared to the world that rock and roll isn't dead was released out of Los Angeles. Ten tracks, 52 minutes, 52 seconds.    And one angry, political band was launched to the rest of the world.  And twenty years from now, every male adolescent will be singing Killing In The Name in defiance of authority while their parents and grandparents can only shake their heads in approval.  Approval because they will share the common bond of growing up listening to Zach, Tom, Brad and Tim.  Approval because the lyrics of Rage will forever change the way the next generation will view the world.  Continuity of the species is guaranteed.

Peterson and Sundays

I can't even being to tell you when this tradition started.  It couldn't have been more than 3 years ago (which is when I bought that tea cup by Colorado ceramicist, Cristine Boyd.)  Jazz had always been the most freeing form of music I've ever heard in my lifetime.  But the late great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, holds a special place in the way his music fills my house every Sunday morning.  Can't play a piano to save my life but I know timeless jazz piano when I hear it.  Oscar Peterson on vinyl, in particular.  Something about being mindful of when the music stops and taking the time to flip the record on the turntable every 20 minutes -- is what Sunday morning should be like, a time to slow down and reflect.  Being secular as I am, listening to Peterson while drinking a cup of green tea with roasted brown rice is as religious of an experience as it ever gets.

A Mullet Christmas

1984 was the year.  The 80s was the decade.  The decade where the most popular music artists would get together, record a song or two or an entire album for a good cause.  In this particular case, proceeds of this Christmas EP went to assist famine relief in Ethiopia.  It was also the height of the popularity of bands like Duran Duran, which has several members pictures in this cover photo.  I was at Dr. Strange Records looking for some punk vinyl but instead found this while scouring the 25c pile.

Check out John Taylor's (Duran Duran bassist) mullet right next to Paul Young's competing mop.  Just to the right is the mullet-in-growth of Tony Hadley (of Spandau Ballet).

Good thing about losing your hair in the 80s like Phil Collins is that you can honestly say you never had a mullet -- ever.  Next to Phil, however, is Irish musician and political activist, Bob Geldof, who had a mullet/grunge hybrid and is the brain-child behind 80s gigs like Live Aid and Band Aid.  Geldof also produced this record.

Rick Parfitt of Status Quo also didn't do the mullet but keyboardist Nick Rhodes (who is 20% of Duran Duran circa 1984) sported not just a mullet but also the whole eyeliner thing.

Can We All Just Get Along?

I did this collage back in 2006 after finding an old LA County Thomas Bros. map for $1 at a yard sale.  I thought that despite our claim of a diverse Los Angeles, we, as a whole are still segregated demographically and economically who live in neighboring cities.  This completed collage (shown above) was about 3 ft x 10 ft but over time, the glue I ended up using didn't last too long and soon enough, my notional neighborhoods fell apart.  In general, only a true Angeleno will fully understand the pairings I did.  I titled the piece "Lost Angeles (Can We All Just Get Along?)"

 The neighborhoods of Bel Air, Temple City and some unincorporated parts of LA County.

 The neighborhoods of Bradbury, Baldwin Hills, San Pedro and El Monte.

 The neighborhoods of Montebello, Brentwood, La Habra and Inglewood.

Since El Segundo always had this long-standing issues with LAX, I thought it might be fun to put more airport (add Palmdale Airport) around them and replace the their coastal access with the city of Rosemead.

 The neighborhoods of Sierra Madre, Hawthorne and Hollywood.

 The neighborhoods of North Hollywood, La Canada Flintridge and East LA (Boyle Heights).

 The neighborhoods of Manhattan Beach, just west of Northridge and north of Lynwood.

The city of San Marino bordered by the cities of Maywood and Huntington Park.

Contrasting Exhibitions at PMCA

What looks like a Romulan mining spaceship crossing a wormhole boundary is actually a piece of artwork by Layer (an architectural firm owned by Lisa Little and Emily White) on display at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA).  This work (above) occupies the museum lobby and is pointed toward the San Gabriel mountains are it protrudes out facing north.  The work is obviously digital in origin and while it may have been executed by humans and assembled by human hands, it is machine-made.  Currently showing at PMCA is a comprehensive display of Edgar Payne's plen air oil paintings (below) from the early part of the previous century.  The galleries exhibited several themes to Payne's works -- the Sierra Nevadas, the Alps, the Southwest and ships.  I cannot help but contrast the works by Layer against those of Payne, separated by about a century in time.  Intuitively, I would be excited with the more modern work but Payne's Sierra Nevada mountain and Southwest painting were something to behold.  Layer's drawings, computer generated and all, may have some interesting algorithms behind them but somehow felt lifeless.  I almost felt the same emotion looking at Layer's works that I experience when I look at a visually and mathematically interesting graphic of a fractal.  While they may represent our best guess at how nature can be described via math and algorithms, I don't feel artistic emotion towards either fractals or Layer's works.  Art is about the human experience, right?  I may also have been biased by two of Payne's subject because I felt I had been there in the landscapes that he saw and painted.  The question remains.  How do you make digital art more "human"?

The Thrift Store Solution

The problem of about three dozen unplayed movies on VHS format when my VCR died about a year ago persisted until I found the solution a month ago.  I tried looking online for a new VCR but just couldn't get myself to procure a brand new unit for about $100 just to play some old movies I have on VHS.  Cult classics like Miracle Mile, Endless Summer (above), Point Break, The Killer are all new to my kids -- who discovered my VHS collection sitting in a closet but with no working VCR.  After I made a donation to the Goodwill Store in Upland, I decided to look inside to kill some time while the kids take their Friday night music lessons at Alta Loma Music.  For $7.99, I bought a used VCR in perfect working condition and soon enough, the kids were watching the Bruce Brown classic for the first time.  JJ remarked how good the soundtrack was to Endless Summer and how he ranked it in his top five movies list.  I know this cheap VCR probably will break down in a couple years so I'm actually considering getting a couple more used units from the Goodwill Store as a backup.  Analog rules.  Thrift stores rule even more!

The Story Behind These Vinyl Finds

Been going back to Dr. Strange Records every week since I found it.  Here's the disclosure.  They cater mostly to punk music.  Some thrash, some DIY, some metal but for the the most part punk.  So after I found another one of these 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett LP for 50c, I asked the guy behind that counter what's the deal because the story obviously doesn't make any profit off these.  Not only can I score them for less than a buck, I also have to pay into a jar -- which turned out to be a donation box for the local humane society.  I was told that people come into this (punk) record store wanting to sell their old vinyl collections for whatever they can get.  A store employee would tell them that it's really a specialty store catering to a very specific genre of youth-oriented music, i.e. punk.  These would-be sellers would be frustrated and really just want to get rid of their old "stuff" so they would ask if they can just leave them there.  And on my last visit, there were about 4 crates of discards that I sorted through to find this vinyl.  I also found 3 more George Benson LPs.  I like it.

Virgin Vinyl

I compare it to the nostalgic sensation when Will Smith put on a fresh pair of Chuck Taylor Converse in the futuristic movie "I Robot".  Something about the analog past just appeals to those who were fortunate enough to live it.  The sensation I'm talking about is cutting through the plastic shrink wrap of a vinyl LP, taking out the inner sleeve and handling the disc for the first time, putting is on the turntable as carefully as I can.  I must have done the routine hundreds of times since I was a little kid all the way to the early 90s when I last bought new vinyl.  Sure, I've been buying used LPs for years but last week, I found this unopened JFA album.  (JFA is Jody Foster's Army, punk/skate band whose guitar player is a good friend of mine.) Virgin vinyl.  What makes this JFA even more pleasurable is the unexpected surprise of blue vinyl.

Planning Hike #4

Can't believe this is the kids' 4th week of summer vacation.  Tomorrow will be our 4th hike in as many weeks and I decided we drive a little bit past Wrightwood to do a 4-mile roundtrip hike to see an old mine.  Elevation is well above 6000 ft but the hike itself, according to my topographic map is relatively flat -- yes that's right, an analog map, although I will charge my GPS watch tonight.  We'll make a day of it and explore Wrightwood a little bit.

The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett

The name of the artist alone caught my attention.  The second time in as many weeks I went to Dr. Strange Records in Rancho Cucamonga and at the first bin I found has these old vinyl for 50c each and 2 for 75c.  How can I resist?  I browsed through all the junk, Streisand, Croce, America, etc. until I found these 3 albums by "The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett".  Anyone who has 50 guitars is my hero (for the record, I have less than 20) but this is vintage instrumental music that is the basis for a lot of covers by classic surf bands.  The days of instrumental music is over and these vinyls belong to a very specialized genre amongst record collectors.  After listening to these 3 albums, I'm now on the hunt for more 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett (I've seen a list of at least 18 releases doing a quick online search).  Although it's doubtful I can get them for 50c each again).

From the website www.spaceagepop.com...
Tommy Garrett was "Snuff" Garrett, A&R director for Liberty from 1958-1966, producer of numerous early 60s hits by white rock-n-roll artists such as Bobby Vee, Johnny Burnette, and Gary Lewis. Garrett also gave Phil Spector his first job in the business, as A&R man in New York for Liberty. He produced a series of LPs for Liberty under the name of "The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett," one of the least adventurous and most easy-listening guitar groups, usually arranged by Ernie Wilkins and with Tommy Tedesco as lead guitar. Garrett also produced a number of exotica recordings by "The Midnight String Quartet" and Jonathan Knight on the Viva! label.

The Art Of Analog

Larry Mullen Jr on cover of "Desire"

Adam Clayton on cover of "Angel of Harlem"

Adam Clayton on cover of "Where The Streets Have No Name"

The Edge on cover of "With Or Without You"

As I was organizing some of my music the other day, I found stashed amongst all the other 45rpm records these four U2 singles from the Joshua Tree/Rattle and Hum era.  Back then, record companies released singles from albums and I had been a big U2 fan for as long as I can remember, so I got just about anything U2 put out.  Not that I've forgotten these songs -- in fact, I listen to the Joshua Tree album just about every time I drive through the California desert.  However, what I'd forgotten is the fact that these Anton Corbijn photographs of the band at the time were just phenomenal.  A Dutch photographer shooting an Irish band in the California desert!  These days, anyone can find any of these single releases on mp3 off Amazon or iTunes.  However, forever lost is the art of the 7" sleeves that is effectively a blank canvas for the artist.  Digital music had replaced the physical paper and vinyl that I spent $5 for each of these items.  Although vinyl seems to be making a comeback, I seriously doubt record companies are willing to put up the money to pay someone like Anton Corbijn for his images to be put on the sleeve of a single containing just two songs.  The return on investment is just not there.  In the meantime, I treasure these images that most younger U2 fans will never get to appreciate.

Relic Of An Analog World (Part 2)

This is literally, the first public pay phone I've seen all year.  Back in the day, I used to memorize where all the pay phones were along my rides so I have this mental map of where they were all along the Foothill communities of Altadena/Pasadena to Duarte/Monrovia.  I always had quarters in my seat pack just in case I need to call for emergency services or contact someone.  This phone is by the restroom just outside the Ahmanson Building at LACMA.  What's even more dated is that phone directory hanging just below the phone itself.  I can't imagine these units being that much profitable to be maintained by the phone company. In fact, of all places, it's strange to see one inside the LACMA campus.  I would think most museum visitors have enough disposable income to afford a cell phone.  Either way, I'm not sure my kids even know how to use one.

PCC Flea Market Finds

Have not been to the Pasadena City College Flea Market in about six months but somehow, found 4 free hours to do dimsum + flea market.  Definitely as secular as one can get on a Sunday morning, scouring through aisles and aisles of stuff produced little in the way of art or furniture finds.  I even drove the Tahoe thinking I will need something to haul a bigger piece back all the way to Rancho Cucamonga.  But alas, getting there around noon meant most of the vendors have sold all their good stuff.  However, I did manage to find some classic jazz vinyls from the giants, Davis, Goodman, Rich and Krupa for a mere...$20!  Vinyl still rules.

Relics Of An Analog (Military) World

Digital is highly over-rated!  There is definitely the case for digital in the modern world -- from computers to automobiles to common household items.  Submarines are no exception in terms of precision and accuracy of their guidance, navigation and weapons systems.  However, in terms of form and function, analog certainly meets the minimum set of requirement.  These gauges are from the WWII vintage submarine USS Bowfin, docked in Pearl Harbor as a public exhibit.  I could not help but notice how I miss those days when gauges and meters were strictly analog -- no LEDs, no LCDs and certainly, no GUIs.  Analog is intuitive.  Needle is in the middle of the scale, all things look good.  Unlike digital, there is no need for that microsecond of human brain processing a numeric display to determine if something is good or bad.  The casings for these analog gauges were just a beautiful as the dials themselves.  A lot are encased in brass or copper -- as opposed to those more modern digital displays wrapped in polished aluminum or molded plastic.  And one can almost argue that for the era, these analog gauges did their job in terms of supporting the mission, i.e. fighting the Japanese in WWII.  On record, the USS Bowfin sank 40 Japanese merchant marine ships and 4 Japanese warships.

Back To Vinyl

Weird how I virtually stopped buying CDs for several years now, save for a couple releases annually and yet, I'm drawn to these vinyl albums.  There are several perfectly good reasons people buy vinyl from the vinyl-sounds-better argument to the for-pure-nostalgic reason.  Me, I think it's a mixture of several factors but mostly it's for the album artwork.  Nothing like a 12-inch canvas to showcase graphic designs which were considered cutting edge at the time. All that mid-century stuff that is still sooo cool.  Today, we dropped by Rhino Records in Claremont and I bought 5 of these classic jazz albums including the one above -- a Quincy Jones Bossa Nova album.

Relics Of An Analog World

This is a section of the radio room inside the aircraft carrier museum USS Midway in San Diego.  I've never been inside this floating airport until this week when the kids and I visited during spring break.  Although all the knobs in this panel look overwhelming, it's really very obsolete and analog.  Digital technology has afforded the modern sailor simpler GUI-based control in switching communication calls between pilots, control tower, officers and other personnel.  I would not be surprised if all the radio equipment in this room at the Midway is compressed to a single rack in the more modern Nimitz-class USS Abraham Lincoln.  Not only is digital communications systems smaller in scale but also has higher capacity (handle more phone calls) and more secure. But hey, what would a museum exhibit be without knobs to turn and switches to flip?

Found Polaroid

"She wore ... blue vel-vet." Movies have soundtracks and so should photographs. This polaroid, I found at the PCC flea market sings that tune every time I look at it.

Relic Of An Analog World

Bought this today at a yard sale about a half mile away for $10.